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While The Scissor Sisters' Ta-Dah is currently the best-selling album in the U.K., it got off to a slower start in the band's U.S. homeland after one of the country's largest music retailers declined to carry it.
Trans World Entertainment — which owns almost 1,100 FYE, Sam Goody, Strawberries, Wherehouse, Specs and Coconuts stores in 26 states — is refusing to sell Ta-Dah because of criticism levelled at it by Scissor Sisters frontman Jake Shears at the National Association Of Recording Merchandisers (NARM) convention in Kissimmee, Florida last month.
"I complained at the NARM convention that record prices were too high," Shears told MTV News. "A few months ago, I went to go buy the new Raconteurs album, and it was like $18.99 [U.S.].
"Of course, I rounded it up to $20 when I made the comments, and now they're denying it. They said, 'Our records are not $20, they're $19.99.' And so now they're not carrying our new record. I mean, even Wal-Mart is carrying it, but FYE is not."
Trans World president/CEO Jim Litwak said that Shears' comments were untrue and unfair, but added that his company would have stocked Ta-Dah if it would have received an apology. It never got one.
"We reached out to their distribution company [Universal Music Group Distribution] to let them know we were displeased, and we never heard back from them. So we made the decision not to carry the band's new release."
It appears that Trans World's boycott is more than just a temporary thing, according to Litwak.
"There are thousands of new releases out there, we've just decided not to carry this one. All they had to do was pick up the phone and talk to us. But they didn't elect to do that. We were ignored, and he made those comments. So who's the injured party here?"
